Television ratings, which reflect the average size of the audience of a television broadcast, are very valuable to an advertiser because they tell the size of the audience for the advertiser's commercial. The fees that a television or broadcast station charges to broadcast an advertisement on the air are largely dependent upon the ratings, so it is important to accurately measure the ratings.
One existing method of measuring an audience size is using an audience research company, such as Nielsen Media Research. Nielsen Television Ratings are generally gathered in one of two ways. One way is with the use of diaries that are kept by viewers, i.e. a target audience self-records its viewing habits. Audience research companies randomly select a limited number of people to maintain a written log or diary for a specified time period, such as for a week, for describing their viewing habits, i.e., each television or broadcast station watched. At the end of the specified period, the completed diaries are returned to the audience research company which then manually compiles the data. These habits can be broken down by demographic and sometimes psychographic information to help broadcasters and advertisers determine who is watching rather than just how many. By targeting various demographics, advertisers can be provided with the types of audiences of any given show, network, and programming hour.
In addition to the use of diaries, audience research companies can also gather viewing data using small devices connected to televisions in selected homes. These devices gather the viewing habits of the home and transmit the information nightly to the audience research company through a “Home Unit” connected to a phone line. The technology-based home unit system is meant to allow market researchers to study television viewing habits on a minute to minute basis, seeing the exact moment viewers change channels or turn off their TV. Both of these existing methods are inherently inaccurate because they depend on the measurement company's ability to select a representative group of people who ostensibly represent the likes and dislikes of the hugely larger actual audience, and the diligence of the participants. Furthermore, these prior art methods are also flawed due to the limited number of participants.
Consequently, a system and method for measuring the audience size of television broadcasts which alleviates the problems inherent in conventional methods as described previously is needed.